ABSTRACT
LEAs have been appointing advisory teachers since at least the early 1960s but it is only in the last few years that these posts have begun to be established on a large scale. According to Stillman and Grant (1989), 82 per cent of advisory teacher posts were created after 1974 and 37 per cent were brought in between 1984 and 1986. Further posts have been added since then and there are now about as many advisory teachers as advisers, although the number varies considerably from one authority to another. As we have already seen, Dean (1991b) found that there were currently over 4,000 such posts. The largest team had 169 posts and the smallest six. The sizes of teams generally bore only a superficial relationship to the size of the authority. Stillman and Grant also found that very little thought had apparently been given to the management of this part of the service.
